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A California rehabilitation foundation for people addicted to heroin was transformed into a “community living experiment” with cult tendencies in the 1950s, according to a new documentary series.
Charles Diedrich, a former alcoholic, initially founded his rehabilitation center in Santa Monica that would become known as the Synanon Foundation in 1958.
By 1978, the center had amassed thousands of members and tens of millions of dollars in assets, including its headquarters located in a historic private beach hotel called Club Casa del Mar that remains in operation today under its original name.
Diedrich is believed to have coined the popular phrase, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life,” according to a 1999 article in The Mercury News.
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Directed and produced by Rory Kennedy and co-produced by her husband Mark Bailey, “The Synanon Fix” features interviews with former members of the communal living experiment, including Diedrich’s daughter, who helped run the cult show.
As the center grew thanks to Diedrich’s success with a type of talk therapy called “The Game,” in which people can say anything in an effort to discourage someone from using substances, non-addicts began to show interest. to join the recovery group that was being formed. It’s supposed to be a two-year residential program.
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These members became known as “lifestylers,” who sought a community more than help managing addiction, states a press release for the new HBO series called “The Synanon Fix.”
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Diedrich opened several locations in California and the East Coast, including one in Westport, Connecticut, and a boarding school in Poland, Maine.
By the 1970s, Synanon had earned a reputation as a utopia and a model society with its own farm, school, and various businesses. According to the documentary, the foundation was also temporarily exempt from taxes until 1977, due to its charitable and religious nature.
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“Crime is stupid, delinquency is stupid, and narcotics use is stupid,” Diedrich once said, as reported by The New York Times after his death in 1997. “What Synanon faces is addiction to stupidity.”
But as its popularity increased and more power fell into Diedrich’s hands (he began to take on the role of a more dictatorial figure, forcing its members to shave their heads and be separated from their children), problems began to arise from the self-sufficient sect. . -as a community.
In 1972, some 75 couples who were part of Synanon were encouraged to renew their wedding vows in a mass ceremony.
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“But as the years passed, the radical therapies became increasingly extreme, degenerating into paranoid behavior and cult-like mandates on Chuck’s part, and culminating in charges of child abuse, assault, and even attempted murder,” says the Press release.
In 1977, Diedrich lost a conciliation case brought by Frances Winn, who said that Synanon kidnapped her for nine days.
Diedrich was sentenced to five years of probation and fell back into alcoholism and was diagnosed with mental illness. He died in a nursing home at age 83.
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